When it comes to the two great Vietnamese restaurants in KC—Vietnam Cafe and Pho Lan—I prefer the latter, if only for its bun bo hue strewn with pigs’ feet. Still, they’re similar. Both sit in Columbus Park, their dining rooms lined with booth seating, and both offer analogous menus of pho, bun bowls, vermicelli noodles stir-fried with various meats and vegetables, and the like. Recently, however, Vietnam’s culinary influence has been spreading across the metro with the opening of coffee houses (like Origin Coi Nguon off North Oak Trafficway) and other more convenient restaurant models, like BB Bánh Mì.
It should be noted immediately that BB Bánh Mì has a drive-thru, which initially caught my attention when it opened last summer north of the river near Vivion and Antioch roads. The option to grab pho on the run sounds like a dream come true (I mostly abhor third-party food delivery services and their painstaking compromise of quality, so the idea of a drive-thru beyond the usual fast food chains should be celebrated). At BB, you can get star anise-sweetened pho, fresh spring rolls, banh mi sandwiches on housemade bread and fried egg-topped broken rice, all handed to you through your driver-side window.
BB’s convenience wasn’t necessarily intentional. Owners and husband-and-wife duo John Nguyen and Makie Thao Vo, who both moved to KC from Saigon six years ago, opened their restaurant in a former Wendy’s and, due to some food operation laws, had to make use of the drive-thru. They’ve made the best of it, and most everything on the menu is served to-go, even if you’re dining in.
Take the bánh mì, for example. Its pickled carrots, jalapenos and cilantro are packaged separately for you to build yourself. Traditionally, bánh mìs are enclosed in a French baguette (a culinary crossbreed born of Vietnam’s colonization by France in the 19th century), but at BB, you get Nguyen’s freshly baked “Vietnamese bread” instead. Every bite still feels like a feral rip, which is half the pleasure of eating a bánh mì in the first place. Most everything else is served to-go. BB is hardly ever full, even on weekends. If customers aren’t pulling up to the intercom to order, they’ve likely placed their order ahead of time and are only walking inside to pick it up.
You don’t have to dine in. There’s no table service, after all, and the space still looks much like a former Wendy’s, especially the fixed salad bar sitting in the middle, now holding silverware, pho fixins and sometimes a vase of flowers to give life to the otherwise bare fixture. But to enjoy the best of BB’s pho and crispy chicken, I recommend saddling up, relaxing and taking a seat.
BB’s whopping bowls of pho, made by simmering beef bones for more than 12 hours, are more savory than others around town. You hardly need to reach for hoisin sauce to round out the sweetness—it’s already just right. On the other hand, the dry pho is uniquely delicious, though if you’re a corn-fed Midwesterner like myself, the menu item might give you pause. Think of all the components of pho, but instead of broth, the noodles are tossed in a brown hoisin-soy sauce mixture and topped with green onions and fried shallots. The broth is served on the side, simply for sipping or for dipping your beef slices, if you choose. Thao Vo, whose son Minh translated for us during our interview, said that while the dish is popular in Vietnam, BB’s version is a more Americanized take they’re proud of.
At BB, the menu is smaller than at its Vietnamese counterparts, but it’s intentional. Crispy whole chicken legs appear throughout, whether deep-fried, roasted or tossed in a sticky, sweet, garlicky sauce. When you order chicken fried rice, you won’t get a Chinese restaurant variation. Instead, you’ll receive one of those hefty chicken legs alongside seasoned rice, cucumbers, carrots and a brown garlic sauce from Thao Vo’s own recipe. You can’t go wrong with any of the chicken dishes.
Nguyen and Thao Vo’s niece worked the front register and floor tirelessly during each of my visits. On a return trip, she told me she remembered me because I’d ordered the oxtail hot pot—a large take-home feast with lotus radishes, vermicelli noodles, garlic chicken and a wonderful broth infused with goji berries, among other offerings.
“It’s mostly our Vietnamese customers who order that,” she said. (On every visit to BB, Vietnamese diners were common. A good sign, I thought—though I didn’t need one.)
Nguyen used to sell these hot pot packages before opening BB, and they were a hit. However, you don’t need to order one of the do-it-yourself hot pots; it’s a serious undertaking unless you happen to have a Cuisinart fondue set, given to you by your aunt Connie as a wedding gift, lying around. If you do, this might be the excuse to finally bust it out.
On Wednesdays, you can snag one hell of a bánh mì for six dollars. There are also a couple of salted coffee drinks topped with cold foam. Thao Vo says Nguyen used to be a bartender at a hotel back in Vietnam, where the two met, and she’d like to expand BB’s drink program. A liquor license feels like too much of an undertaking at the moment, so instead she hopes to expand the coffee menu and eventually add made-from-scratch teas.
BB may not be the city’s definitive Vietnamese restaurant, but it’s certainly the most convenient. The delicate balance of preparing meals to be handed out a window has its drawbacks—as seen in the dry pork chop that accompanied an otherwise satisfying broken rice. Thao Vo doesn’t shy away from calling her restaurant fast food. She knows they’re chasing immediacy. And when the timing is right, when the food is eaten hot and without delay, it hits exactly where it should.
